Topic 423: Occupy the WELL

Across the globe people are coming together to "occupy" spaces,
creating ongoing General Assemblies, which are headless meetings,
attempts to practice the difficult collaborative art of direct
democracy and address issues of economics and political organization
that, many would say, have brought all the people of the world to the
brink of disaster - while a very few have accumulated piles of money
and created safe havens. What began as an effort to Occupy Wall Street
and challenge the assumptions of big finance has become a large and
growing global network of dissent. The purpose of this forum is to have
our own public General Assembly on the WELL.

Here's the manifesto created by the People's Assembly of New York for
Occupy Wall Street, presented as a stimulus for discussion here.
A MESSAGE TO AMERICA FROM THE PEOPLES ASSEMBLY IN ZUCOTTI PARK
Dear fellow Americans,
We are assembled in Zucotti Park  which weve renamed Liberty Plaza 
in the financial district of New York, because we believe that the
American economy is heading in the wrong direction and we have a few
ideas for what to do about it.
There is a feeling shared by a growing number of people on the streets
of the world that the global economy has become a kind of Ponzi
scheme, a global casino, run by and for the benefit of the 1 percent.
We believe that it is possible to inject justice into the global
economy. We have come up with the following list of things that can be
done right now to rejuvenate democracy and economic justice in our
country:
- Halt foreclosures for the unemployed, sick and elderly
- Increase funding to public services by taxing the richest 1 percent
- Forgive all student loan debt
- Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act in order to control speculation
- Work with the other G20 nations to implement a 1% Robin Hood tax
on all financial transactions and currency trades
- Ban high-frequency flash trading and bring sanity to the markets
- Break up the too big to fail banks that threaten our future
- Arrest the financial fraudsters responsible for the 2008 meltdown
and bring them to justice
- Ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence
corporate money has on our elected representatives in Washington
If you agree with any of these demands, then join us! We will stay
here in our encampment in Liberty Plaza until President Obama responds
to each of these demands. This is just the beginning, there is more to
come as we work together to reshape America.
 The Peoples Assembly of New York City

seriously, i'll jump in with a recurring pet peeve: media (and others)
calling for occupy wall street to get to the point, and state clearly
defined goals
two things about this:
1) the message and goals could scarcely be more clear
2) this is a prophetic movement - they're holding up a mirror, plain
and simple
if people can't hear the message, they aren't listening (imho) - and
if they don't like what they see, it's not the fault of the mirror

I think it would help to have some bullet points, if not a "list of demands."
<jef> has a five-item list that works pretty well.
I think it's great that they are running this thing without high-profile
leaders.

And it just gets worse...from the World Future Society's 25 Year
Forecast, #11 (http://www.wfs.org/forecasts/index.html)
The U.S. richpoor gap is another disaster waiting to happen 
probably around 2020. If the economic situation looks bad now, just
wait until the end of the decade, warns former U.S. Labor Secretary
Robert B. Reich in his book Aftershock. Present-day concentration of
wealth in the hands of too few Americans, and the related problem of
out-of-control consumer debt, will lead to economic stagnation and
political upheaval with impacts felt across the world.
Implications: Individuals can take control of their own consumer debt,
as well as prepare themselves for uncertain futures by investing in
training for new careers, for example. They can also lobby their
representatives to enact policies that promote their interests, but as
Reich points out, the complexity of these issues may lead many
uninformed voters to vote against their own interests.

I've been working with the comments moderation tools for Salon story
comments, and so I just un-marked some comments with links the system
thought were spam. I noticed this cool page:
http://www.occupytheboardroom.org/

love that!
also, for anybody who missed it, there is an ows working group
organizing a non-partisan national assembly to be held in philadelphia
next july
https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
the draft petition of grievance issues are worth a read for anybody
who wants to better understand the goals of the movement

The people who dreamed up OWS and had the guts to make it happen are
my heroes and heroines. Those photos of everybody everywhere bring
tears to my eyes. Thank you, thank you, sign-makers and marchers and
shouters and campers. Bless you, walkers and sitters and
leaders and followers.

I just posted this in News, reposting here:
Last night, after my event at Poets House in Battery Park City in NY, there
was a reception, then a dinner--we didn't get done till almost midnight. But
a sweet board member emerita and her forbearing husband walked me in ig
big gust winds (umbrella turn inside out winds) and rain over to the Occupy
park. Very few people were still awake. You couldn't tell one round lump of
tarp from another--the entire central area was a jumble of plastic, plastic,
plastic. Some must have had trash in them, some must have had supplies, and
many must have had people. Here and there, a little group of three or five
still up and standing and talking. We'd wander over, I'd say thank you.
They'd say, "sure." It felt utterly hypocritical of me to say anything
more--"I support you"? when they are out in the rain and the cold, with, as
one man told me the polic pepper spraying them when they march anywhere. Big
towering police camera focussing down on them all from the side. Many polic
e vehicles lined up along the edge of the park. I felt so badly I'd come
empty=handed, too.
It was small, and a huge mess, as epicenters I suppose generally are. I am
grateful I've seen it under the harder, uncharismatic conditions. I wish it
had felt a better time to talk to any of them, but it felt like going into
someone's living room uninvited, at that hour, in that weather.
(sorry about the typos, sticky computer keys... I took a few photos, will
see if I can somehow make viewable--but they don't begin to show the feel of
this encampment, the sweep of it in the dark and the rain and discomfort)

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